Cuban family to take hunger striker's ashes to US

Jun 08, 2011 |

HAVANA

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Orlando Zapata

Cuban authorities exhumed the remains of dissident Orlando Zapata, who died in February 2010 after an 85-day hunger strike, to allow his family to take his ashes to the United States, the family said Tuesday.

"We were finally we were able to exhume the remains... and now we travel to Havana to incinerate them," his mother Reina Tamayo said after the exhumation in Banes, some 840 kilometers (520 miles) east of Havana.

Zapata died at age 42, on the 85th day of a hunger strike demanding better prison conditions, in a case that drew global attention to the plight of political dissidents in Cuba.

Thirteen of his family members have received visas allowing them to emigrate to the United States, and plan to take Zapata's ashes with them.

The former construction worker had been jailed since 2003 and deemed a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. He went on hunger strike to protest prison conditions that he blamed for his deteriorating health.

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